From Simple Bookmarks To Social Bookmarking: Then And Now

If you see those giant social bookmarking sites today and compare those to what bookmarks were before, you might be amazed by the transformation and, of course, Internet and the ongoing development of technology, played a huge role on that. It’s like the usual rags-to-riches story of some of our fellowmen sans the drama. Well, just what are bookmarks before this? What are they originally meant for? Do they have a different function way back?

Bookmarking when it was first introduced to us serves quite the same purpose as to what it does today. The very first bookmarking activities are either limited to your mind, pen and paper, and your web browser. At one point folks tried to remember sites by memorizing the URL. It was just fine storing those links in your brain. However, when more and more sites came out and URLs became longer, it was found best to either write it down on paper or copy and paste the links to a document file, then save it.

Soon after, the bookmarking feature became readily available within web browsers. In most browsers, there’s a certain part in the menu toolbar that allows you to bookmark or save the URL of the current site you are browsing. This is really very handy since you don’t need to crack further your brain to absorb those links. You also don’t have to look for some pens and papers or open a document writer before you can save the URL information of your favorite sites. With the bookmarking tool in most web browsers, a single click is just what it takes to do the job.

But because technology and Internet are growing rapidly, it also paved way for bookmarking to take a step higher from just a private thing to a social gathering online. Bookmarking through your web browser lets you save those websites or blogs that you visit most of the time. So you see, you have your own bookmarks. Your friends may have too and other people as well. What if everyone can share their bookmarked sites to one another? What if you’re able to check out the favorite sites of other individuals? This is how social bookmarking started.

When you sign up for social bookmarking sites, you get to have your own account and profile. What’s good about this is that it’s free to join and through your profile, you can do a lot of things. You can bookmark and save those favorite and most visited sites of yours. You can share those bookmarks to the online community. You can add friends and communicate with them through inbox messages and comments. You can search the bookmarking community for topics or sites of your interest and see if others have such information in their bookmarks. You can also vote or rate bookmarks that you like.

Bookmarking has really grown into an online social activity much like what social networks do, but there’s still a distinctive line between the two. We already have a huge bunch of social bookmarking sites online. You may wonder why is this so. Why so many bookmarking sites? Surely, it’s not just about socialization and online rendezvous, right? Well, that’s true because social bookmarking has taken yet another important role in the online world.

Internet marketers and folks who work from home saw what social bookmarking can contribute to the success of their online business. From then on, these social bookmarking sites became not only a bookmarking tool and a place for online gathering, but also an effective means of exposing your business to the world, driving traffic to your site and finding potential clients.

This business edge is one reason why more and more social bookmarking sites are starting to take form on the Internet. It’s also one good factor why there’s an ongoing battle for social bookmarking supremacy. From simple bookmarks to effective social bookmarking, who knows what is next with the world of bookmarking? We’ll just have to wait and see.